The response was so strong from the article I posted last week of 15 email marketing insider tips that I wanted to share nine more with you in this article.
Considering that my company Maui Mastermind sends out millions of targeted emails every month to our subscriber elist for our business coaching company, we’ve learned what does and doesn’t work.
Here are nine more real world email tips that will help you do your email marketing smarter and more effectively.
1. Email often.
Too many people are frightened of bothering their audience or getting labelled a “spammer”. First, spam is when you send an email to someone you have no pre-existing relationship with who did not ever ask to get email from you in the first place. You are not a spammer. Rather than email 1x/quarter or 1x/month, email once a week or more often. Yes watch your open rate, unsub rate, and spam report rate, but error on the side of more in most cases. This is one of the easiest ways to increase your email results–increasing your frequency of mailing.
2. Create your “Prospect Education Funnel” (PEF).
Your PEF is the scripted best sequence of email messages you want to send to any new contact onto your elist. Version 1.0 may only be 6 emails long. Refine it as you go. What process do you need to walk a new prospect through so that they are ready to hire your product or service?
3. Once they graduate from your “PEF” move all appropriate contacts into your “eletter” group.
Make sure you don’t just stop emailing them, but rather, once your PEF has run its course with a new prospect, get them into a patterned, ongoing campaign to hear your messaging. Mail them according to your promotional and content calendar. Take your best emails and re-use them (e.g. in your PEF, in your eletter 6-12-18 months from now, etc.)
4. If you can just get to 25-50 emails you’ll have enough of an eletter base for the next 2-3 years.
You can repurpose them again and again, with a sprinkling of new offers and edits. Then at some point in the future you’ll review this base, keep your best emails, add in new ones you’ve tested to be strong, and repeat the process. The moral to this story is that it’s hardest to start, but once you hit critical mass (enough emails so your audience forgets them before the time you next repeat the messaging) it becomes much less stressful.
5. Emails are a great place to do A/B testing.
Test your subject lines; offers; calls to action; email format; etc.
6. Use your subject line tests to find your irritable and utterly compelling sales scripting.
Little by little you’ll build up a body of what subject lines (think headline or sales bullet) resonates with your audience. Then you build this insight into your website copy, marketing collateral, future emails, and live sales scripting.
7. Find your template(s) / pattern / rhythms.
For example, we email 3:1 – three content messages for every direct sales email. We also mail twice a week. Etc.
8. Find your voice.
Your emails are your way to connect one-to-one with your audience. Yes, one-to-one. What is your brand voice? For my company Maui Mastermind our voice is casually professional, down-to-earth, “I’m your peer” and a real person, and content rich.
9. Be interesting, valuable, relevant, and real.
This is what your subscribers want. Tall order? Remember, you can recycle email messages again after a few months spacing so it’s worth the effort to get your messaging sharp.